Anyone seen my DVD? Ohio loses disc holding 50,000 citizens' records

Taxmen's backup goes AWOL

Ohio's Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) slipped out a quiet end-of-year confession that it has lost a backup DVD with information and documents on 50,000 individuals.

The loss was discovered on November 10, 2015, but only made public on December 31. RITA's statement says the agency was preparing a bunch of backup DVDs for destruction when it noticed that one of the cases was empty. The backups had been stored offsite at a "third-party vendor's secure facility."

By November 17, the agency had worked out what data was held on the missing DVD: copies of income tax documents, as well as "names, addresses, social security numbers and possibly dates of birth."

Individuals who may have been affected will be offered a year of free credit monitoring by Experian.

News website Cleveland.com notes that it's not the first time RITA has mislaid data. In 2006 a laptop belonging to the agency was stolen from an employee's vehicle.

The agency's announcement is here. At the time of writing, RITA's site was down, but it appears to be staggering to its feet now. Here's a copy in Google's cache just in case. ®